The drawing room held its breath.
“That,” Joanna said quietly, “is a great deal more honest than I was prepared for, Brother.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“There is your forfeit.”
“Indeed.”
Cassian did not look at Alice. He did not look at her because if he did, he was going to lose the composure he had spent the last two hours holding onto. And in a room with fourteen guests, he was not at liberty to lose it.
“Lady Alice,” Joanna said, after a pause. She had evidently decided, with the bright courtesy of a hostess, that she had pushed her brother quite enough for one evening. “It is your turn. The moment at which you fell in love with Cassian. In the interest of fairness, we must have both.”
Alice did not answer at once. She set her cards down with the careful slowness she had shown in her father’s orangery.
“It was—” She broke off.
She did not finish because at that moment, a muffled crash sounded somewhere deep in the house, followed by the high-pitched cry of a child.
The drawing room went still in a different way.
Alice was on her feet before Cassian had registered the sound. “That is a child.”
“Lady Alice,” Joanna said, “we have no children?—”
“That is a child crying, Joanna. Where is it?”
“It came from?—”
“Where?”
“The east wing. The small library.”
Alice was already out of the drawing room.
Cassian, who had never in his life seen her move that fast, was on his feet two seconds later.
CHAPTER 23
The small library was at the far end of the east corridor. It was not much used.
The great library was at the other end with the comfortable couches and the proper desks and the long windows overlooking the orchard. The small library was a leftover, a low paneled room with three walls of unloved books and a fourth wall of bow windows that looked out over the stable yard. It had been his grandfather’s library. Since coming to Langton at eighteen, Cassian had not done anything with it.
The child was on the floor. He was perhaps six years old with very fair hair and brown eyes. A small white shirt hung on his frame, and his bare feet stuck out under the hem of breeches that had been let down at least twice.
He was lying half on his side, with two books and a toppled library steps across his left leg, and was crying and hiccupping. He had just discovered, for the first time in his short life, that gravity was not on his side.
Alice was already kneeling beside him.
“There, sweet boy. There. Hush, my love. We have you. Cassian, the books?—”
Cassian, who had not until this moment heard Alice call him by his Christian name without immediately using the next four words to apologize for it, lifted the volumes off the boy’s leg.
They were not very heavy. They had landed hard, however, and they had brought the library steps down with them. The steps had clipped the boy’s ankle on the way down. Cassian could see it redden just above the bone.
“My ankle hurts.”